Over the past decade, the Internet has grown to a size unmanageable without automated tools. Currently, millions use the Internet to access information, purchase or sell goods and services, communicate with others, etc. However, due to the enormous amount of information available over the Internet, it is not always possible for a user to manually determine exactly where to find information on a particular topic. Likewise, the size of the Internet also makes it difficult for online advertisers to manually determine where to place their advertisements. In order to more easily navigate the Internet, users typically utilize search services. Advertisers, in turn, often provide their advertisements to these search services so that their advertisements can be displayed along with user search results. In doing so, the probability that the advertisers' advertisements are presented to interested users is increased.
In the typical search scenario, a user transmits a search request to a search service. Based on the search request, search results are identified and provided to the user. Many search services perform additional processing to determine the order or ranking of the search results. For example, some search services determine the ranking of search results based on popularity metrics, e.g., site traffic, number of linking sites, etc. and provide ranked/ordered results in response to search requests. As is well-known, Internet content providers will often attempt to influence ranked search results not by providing more compelling content, but by other means. As a result, simply measuring the number of times a web page is visited or using a popularity index might not accurately convey the utility of a web page to the user performing a search. For example, a manipulated page for unauthorized sales of drugs, movies, etc. might be able to obtain a high popularity rating, but what the typical user will want to see is a more authentic page. In many cases, rather than including references to pages where a product can be bought legitimately, search results might return references to pages of disreputable sellers and even references to pages designed to push malware to a user's computer, which may have nothing to do with the desired search.
What is needed in the art are systems and methods that provide high quality search result and other rankings, and that filter for undesirable search and other results.